TiVo is losing a couple of OTT services. Though, given their popularity, or lack thereof, it probably won’t impact many users. One True Media is dropping support for all TiVo models, according to a thread at TiVo Community. One user posted a message they received from One True Media.
We are sorry to announce that we are in the process of phasing out our “Share to Tivo” feature.* We are including instructions on how to access your current shares.* We realize that not everyone is set up to receive internet video on their televisions, but you can continue to share your One True Media creations via our “Share to YouTube” and Facebook shares.
TiVo URL for direct type in (when user is logged in)
To manage their channel:http://www.onetruemedia.com/otm_site/view_channel
To add a Video to their channel:
http://www.onetruemedia.com/otm_site…_id=**********
Directions to share:
1. Go to share online for the Video you want to add to your TiVo channel
2. In the URL replace /auth_share? with *channel_publish_work?
3. Make sure to keep the work_id
4. This take you to the TiVo share pagesCustomer Care
One True Media, Inc.
I’ve never gotten the impression that One True Media is a very popular service among TiVo users, so I doubt there will be too many people up in arms over this. YouTube just dominates video sharing.
The other service TiVo is dropping may impact more users. TiVo models earlier than the Premiere lost Rhapsody, as reported by Zatz Not Funny. Rhapsody recently changed their API, which broke all of the existing third party apps, like TiVo. TiVo has created a new Flash-based app for the Premiere, but will not be updating the app for the earlier TiVo models. Given the popularity of other services, such as Pandora, the loss of Rhapsody probably won’t bring too many tears.
Here is some background: we contacted all our device partners several months before this necessary change to our service, providing them all the info necessary to make a successful change. The vast majority of these partners made the change on time and successfully tested their devices (as did Rhapsody) and signed-off. However, after roll-out, some partners found bugs in their systems not apparent in previous testing that they needed to address. These partners are working to correct the issues they discovered as quickly as they can. They realize you’re their customers too and want to get things working properly.
Rhapsody first revealed that TiVo had decided to drop support on the Series2 and Series3 platforms, updating only the Premiere:
Tivo has started pushing out their firmware update to their series 4 DVR systems. They say it should be out to everyone by the end of August.
As far as the series 2 and 3 devices, Tivo has chosen not to update the firmware for those devices, meaning Rhapsody will no longer be accessible on them. This was a call that Tivo made, not us, and yeah, it sucks. Wish it was better news, but that’s the news we have.
And this was later confirmed by TiVo on TiVo Community:
I can confirm that an update is rolling out to Series4 boxes which will get Rhapsody up and running again. Unfortunately, due to recent technical limitations with the Rhapsody application Series3 and Series2 users will no longer have access to Rhapsody from their TiVo DVR. We apologize for the inconvenience.
It sounds like One True Media didn’t give TiVo any choice, they’re pulling support. But with Rhapsody it sounds like they made a necessary update to their service to update an expiring cert and TiVo decided not to invest resources in updating the client on older platforms. Or perhaps they couldn’t, given the “recent technical limitations” statement, though I’d like to know what those limitations are.
So what about you? Are you upset by the loss of either of these services? Leave a comment.
